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Whoa! Vice is heading for bankruptcy!

That magazine was a big chunk of my teens and 20s—for which I had a love/hate relationship.

Hipsterism is officially dead.

theguardian.com/media/2023/may

The GuardianVice Media reportedly headed for bankruptcyBy Mark Sweney

It’s wild how every defining media and cultural brand of my generation is dead or dying.

Vice is going bankrupt.

BuzzFeed News is dead.

American Apparel is dead.

Pitchfork is a shell of itself.

I mean, at least the Boomers still have Rolling Stone.

In hindsight, though, I feel like my generation (Millennials) stopped giving a damn about earnestness and authenticity—and instead chased aspiration and performance.

Because that’s what Vice, BuzzFeed, American Apparel were really about.

They weren’t cultural creatives as much as media properties that tried to define themselves by acquiring and assembling culture—seeking status through taste.

Vice and BuzzFeed are dead or dying because their whole value was in being cultural gatekeepers.

But now social media algorithms have killed cultural gatekeepers.

Cultural gatekeeping has moved to a human endeavour to one that’s automated.

I have a feeling that my generation (Millennials) will be the last to define themselves by consumption.

We bought the Yeah Yeah Yeahs t-shirt, acquired the Basquiat print, ate the famed avocado toast.

But everything is becoming more ethereal nowadays. People don’t own things. We don’t even rent them.

We do something even more impermanent: we stream.

System IV, Building K

@atomicpoet @BlackAzizAnansi Around the time Adobe got away with making all of their apps subscriptions, all hell broke loose.

Mercedes now sells you a $100K EV, then wants $90/month to “unlock”extra speed. BMW wants $30/month to “enable” the heated steering wheel you bought.